UPDATE 8 NOV 2014:
I liked the first SanDisk Ultra II so much, I bought a second 240GB drive for my gaming PC. Unfortunately, the gaming PC motherboard was produced in 2009 so it is still SATA 2.0 (3 Gb/s). The benchmarks were a bit better, 260 MB/s read and 240 MB/s write. One of these days, I'll upgrade my stuff to USB 3.0 with SATA 3.0 as well.
This is actually my first SSD. I've been biding my time and waiting for the prices to drop a bit. The new line of Ultra II drives seems more affordable. They are supposed to feature a second generation of 19 nm TLC NAND semiconductor technology, with a Marvell Controller. The Ultra II is a SATA III capable drive, but is backwards compatible with other SATA versions. My Dell Studio 1537 laptop is from 2008 and is only capable of SATA II speeds. As a result, the SanDisk Ultra II only scored 244.2 MB/s read and 225.1 MB/s write with CrystalDiskMark. I saw speeds hovering around 200 MB/s for read/write in 512k and 4k QD32 modes in CrystalDiskMark. Aside from benchmarks, the bootup speeds and application/file access times have dropped DRAMATICALLY. I no longer hear my old 5400 RPM hard drive spinning and churning, waiting several seconds to open up Office 2013 or large files. The SanDisk Ultra II runs silent and ice cold to the touch, and Office 2013 opens up almost instantly as does iTunes.
I used Macrium Reflect to clone my existing 320GB Seagate drive onto the 240GB SanDisk Ultra II. Macrium Reflect did not exhibit any drama in cloning a larger drive onto a smaller drive. I used an Anker USB enclosure for the SanDisk, and I had a problem where cloning failed intermittently. After figuring out that I needed to use a pair of 1A USB chargers along with the eSATA capable, it went smoothly without any problems - but it did take 4 hours to complete.
The Ultra II is thinner than a regular hard drive, but I didn't have any issues installing it in the drive chassis of my laptop. I wish my Dell laptop was SATA III capable, but SATA II isn't half bad. Also, 240 GB is fairly small. I highly recommend stepping up to a much larger SSD in my honest opinion. I do not store lots of large files, but with the meager amount of programs I run, the drive is about 80% full.
As a side note, I have had numerous issues with Hibernate and Windows 7 with this SSD. During a hibernated boot-up, I'd see that the restoration data has to be repaired or some other error always pops up. I finally just shut off hibernation, and so far cold starts seem to be fine. It actually starts up faster and shuts down faster without hibernation.
Overall: 5/5 stars, perfect replacement for a hard drive, runs silent and ice cold to the touch, extremely fast data access/write speeds
| Standing screen display size | 2.5 Inches |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive | 240 GB 1x240GB |
